Internet in Your RV

The Internet has moved from novelty to virtual necessity for many people in recent years. RV satellite internet technology brings this necessity to your RV. For many people, the internet has become a way of life. It is used to keep in touch with family and friends. I use it to pay bills and handle banking transactions. I use it to retrieve information of all types quickly. All of these functions are as important on your RV vacation as when you are sitting at home. RV satellite internet services have made it possible to perform all of them when on the road. Now RVing has taken a turn towards the HI TECH world where you can be camping one minute and then the next, running your office from your fold down table. With the wireless option added to your internet you can now even enjoy a camp fire and surf the web in your lounge chair burning a few marshmallows.

Let’s talk about what you will need to pull this all off and have fun at the same time. First you will need a fixed/transportable mobile Internet antenna system designed for virtually any satellite VSAT platform. This can be done at a dealership by a tech and installed in 1 day. You will need a PC or a Laptop in your RV so they can set it up to work with your new Sat system. One of the many systems that are designed for internet is the WineGard DirecStar® (DT74), this unit is designed for RV’s and is roof mounted. They would install this on the roof and then run the wires down into a cabinet near a 12v or 110 volt outlet or a source of power. The next thing would be to install the receiver and PC connections. The best way I have found to make this as least invasive as possible to your RV is to make the system wireless, this way you do not have to run wires for the PC connection, and you won’t even see the system unless you open a cabinet to look at it. With this setup you can even walk 300 feet from your RV and have internet on your Laptop, PDA or BlackBerry. So as you can see there a lot of options for Internet, some campgrounds even offer wireless internet for free or for a small fee wile you stay there. Well that is all for now and when you see someone at a camp ground with a laptop and you would like to know what the weather for the week is, just go up and ask, and they will just surf the internet and tell you the 7 day forecast.

This article was brought to you by Good Sam RV Emergency Road Service

Internet, Satellite dishes, and Trees

I have a love/hate relationship with trees. I love the beauty, the shade, and the ambiance they provide. I hate that they block our satellite dish from connecting us to Internet. It took me a while before I had the nerve to ask a park for a site without trees. That was sacrilege! But, I got over it. We have plenty of opportunity to enjoy trees on walks and driving around. When I’m ‘home’ I want my Internet! I’ve learned to simply ask if there are any ’satellite friendly’ sites. Even though relatively few people have the Internet satellite that we do, the TV satellites have the same issue with trees, and park personnel are accustomed to dealing with the issue.

The following pictures are from Oregon and California. Our dish did get connected here, even with all the trees. It doesn’t need a wide open area, just a hole thru the branches (in the exact right spot) will do.

In the 5 years that we’ve been traveling and using our Datastorm Internet Satellite dish, trees have not bothered us. We were always able to find a hole thru the trees big enough for our dish to find its satellite and connect.

Until now.

We are in New England and I’ve never seen so many trees! As I mentioned in last week’s article, we had no connection (Satellite, Wi-Fi, or Cellular) in Acadia National park. The picture below is from a commercial park in central Maine. We didn’t even try to raise the dish here. Luckily, this park had good free Wi-Fi, so we got online all we wanted.

This next photo is from Burlingame State Park in Rhode Island. No satellite connection available here! And no Wi-Fi. Luckily the Verizon signal was good enough to use the Broadband Connect feature of our phone.

The angle of your dish makes a difference
Another thing that makes it more difficult to connect here in New England is that we are so far north and east. The satellite is in geosynchronous orbit over the equator somewhere in the Pacific. That means that it appears to stay in the exact same place … it is orbiting at the same rate the earth is spinning. For more info see this NASA site.

Think about it, if we were parked near the equator, our satellite dish would be pointing straight up. If the photo above was taken in Southern California, we may have been able to connect because the dish would be aimed higher and may be shooting over the trees. Here in New England, the dish is pointing much closer to the horizon, and even short trees get in the way.

Just another example that, if you need the Internet as you travel, you need to use all three methods to connect.

Chris Guld
www.geeksontour.com

Internet at Libraries and Cafes

We are currently in Acadia National Park! It is beautiful here. We really like to stay on the Park property and we chose a national park campground called Seawall. There are no hookups, and certainly no Wi-Fi here at ‘Seawall’ campground. We could run our generator, but our satellite dish could not connect thru all these trees! Our cell phones would not maintain a connection either – so we were OFF line! But, this is where we wanted to stay.

What do we do? I want to stay here for 3 nights, but my RV.net article is due today?! Well there are Wi-Fi hotpspots at various cafes and, most always at Public Libraries. We found a public library in Southwest Harbor, near the campground, where Wi-Fi was offered. What a cool place!

Internet Access at Public Libraries

And, I am certainly not the only one taking advantage of the Internet connection. One man who said he was traveling thru the area had a deadline to submit a grant proposal. Who cares that he’s on vacation in a beautiful national park? He can take a few hours, visit this local library, get his work done and get back to play! Others were just checking their email, and the woman next to me said she lived nearby but appreciated the free high-speed Internet.

I took a few minutes to speak with the director of this library. She said that the state of Maine has a wonderful public library system that helped them get set up as a Wi-Fi hotspot. She enjoys offering this service because she sees the benefits. There are traveling business people who take advantage of it as well as college students taking exams and many travelers every day accessing their email. She said that travelers particularly liked the fact that the Wi-Fi hotpsot was wide open and always on. They could access it from the parking lot 24 hours/day.

So, the purpose of this post is to encourage you to check out local public libraries as sources for Internet connections. They’re free, they’re usually high-speed, and you might meet some interesting people! We also took advantage of Wi-Fi at our lunch spot in Bar Harbor. Lobster Bisque and Internet. Does it get any better?

This is Chris Guld signing off from Acadia National Park in the Southwest Harbor Public Library!

Chris Guld

www.geeksontour.com

Internet on the Road, Bandwidth Limits

We’ve come a long way since dial-up. Just five years ago, if you wanted to get Internet while RVing, you had to schlep your laptop up to the office and plug into the one phone cable. It was very slow, and you needed to limit your time so other guests could use it.

Now you have 3 choices for high-speed, wireless Internet access:

1. Wi-Fi
2. Satellite
3. Cellular

We depend on our Datastorm Satellite Dish to give us Internet wherever we are.  But we also use Wi-Fi when available, and we tether our cell phone to the computer when the other two methods are not available.

All three of these, when working well, will get you high-speed.  Almost as good as the DSL or Cable you can get at home.  What they won’t get you is unlimited high-speed like you can get at home.  The satellite option has the most clearly regulated limit.  It’s called ‘FAP’ and it stands for Fair Access Policy.  You see, everyone with a satellite dish for Internet is sharing the satellites.  The satellites I’m familiar with are owned by Hughes and Hughes takes care of managing everyone’s usage so no one customer takes more than their fair share of the bandwidth. Read more

Windows Vista and Wi-Fi

Does it ever seem like you and your computer are locked in a battle of wits?

And the computer is winning.

As computers, and operating systems, get more and more sophisticated; they do more things automatically. In trying to make it easy for us, the computer programmers make assumptions about what we want. And, you know what happens when you *ASSUME* right? (you make an ASS of U and ME.)

One of the things that happens automatically these days is that your computer will automatically connect to a Wi-Fi network to which it has connected in the past. I say, “Just because I may have connected to a similarly-named network in the past does *not* necessarily mean I want to automatically connect to it now.” The video below shows you how to prevent your computer from connecting to an unwanted network. The video shows Windows Vista. If you have Windows XP, the same principal applies but the menus are a little different. Right-click on the wireless network icon and choose ‘View Available Wireless Networks.’ On that screen click on the menu at left that reads ‘Change the order of preferred networks.’ Now you can select a network and remove it just like in the Vista video below.

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Chris Guld
www.GeeksOnTour.com

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